Defending Adoption

So yeah.

I'm adopted. I'll get back to that one in a second.

I also adopted two children.

I have some feelings about this whole thing. They are just my feelings. I can not speak for my children, nor for the entire community of adoptive parents, or the entire community of adoptees.

I can not speak for the birth mothers. Kateri is in great pain, and my heart goes out to her. (I wish that my birth mother felt the same way you do, Kateri)

But I want to speak from my heart for a minute.

First of all, I'm not a charitable person. The only "charitable" thing I ever did was to add an extra dollar to the gyrating Chippendoll stripper's G-string last month. So the whole idea that an adoptive parent is some sort of saint makes me giggle uncontrollably. I adopted because I wanted a couple of kids. That's it.

But I'm not a villain either. I believe that my kids are happier with our family--surrounded with love--as best as I can give-- than they would be growing up in an orphanage. That is the only other option they had. I did not create the circumstances that led them to be abandoned.

If you, world, think that it would have been better for my kids to remain in an orphanage, then I really can't argue with that. Because I cannot think of any coherent argument to make.

I am adopted, and delighted to be so. Why? Because my birth mother *REJECTED* me. I don't know if my birth father even knows that I exist.

My birthmother directed the doctor who delivered me to make sure that I was never told of her, nor did she ever want to know anything about me. I did find her in 1992, wrote her a polite letter, and was told to "PLEASE! PLEASE! LEAVE ME ALONE FOREVER."

So I suffered a Primal Wound? Better than the real wounds that my birth family probably would have inflicted upon me.

Do I wish that I had been raised by my birth parents? Only if they were able to give me the undying love that my adopted parents showered upon me, but, all circumstances being equal, of course.

In a perfect world, all kids would be born to a parent or parents who passionately desired a child. Parents who were physically, emotionally, and financially equipped to raise them to adulthood. Anybody who wanted a child could have as many as they liked.

In a perfect world, my kids and I would not know each other at all, other than I would occasionally think of the children in China growing up with their proud birth parents, their birthright, their heritage intact..speaking the language of their ancestors...and smile. Then I would go hug the children from my womb..and then hug my parents who joined together in love to create and raise me.

A fantasy world.

In the world that I live in every day of my life, I am better off adopted and my kids are too.